Whatever state I am in therewith to be content.
— Philippians 4:11
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The Simple Reality Project is an example of the art of synthesis, combining separate elements to form a coherent and simple whole. Students of metaphysics must be adept at this or risk becoming lost in a mass of detail. Thomas Jefferson said that distinguishing the authentic sayings of Jesus in the New Testament from those that obviously could not have been uttered by the Master teacher could be done intuitively. Jefferson compiled those authentic parables into a small book sorting out the things that he intuited Jesus would have said from those he could not have said was as easy, Jefferson later remarked, as finding diamonds in a dunghill. Jiddu Narayaniah Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was also such a sorter extraordinaire.
Our purpose in this article is not to present biographical information about Krishnamurti but to honor him as a master synthesizer of human inner wisdom—the profound realizations that can lead a person into the process of transformation and transcendence—a process that he himself experienced. Krishnaji was identified when he was a child by leaders of the Theosophical Society as an incarnation of Jesus. He was indeed to prove an extraordinary person but not in the way that they had hoped.
When he was 16 years old, Krishnaji and his younger brother, Nitya, were taken by Annie Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society to England. “The brothers continued their lessons on a broad range of subjects and were always surrounded by numerous teachers and tutors. An English education was thought to be of paramount importance.”[i] The word “indoctrination” would not be inappropriate at this time and the beliefs, attitudes and values of the English version of P-B would present future challenges for the young truth seeker.
Although, as a young man, Krishnaji came to look upon Annie Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society as his mother (his own mother had died when he was 10), he would not let that relationship stand in the way of doing his own thinking and affirming his own intuitive insights. What the Theosophists didn’t count on in grooming their “world savior” was that he valued the messages of his heart over those of his intellect.
What Krishnaji would later rebel against was the notion of creating an institution. He came to understand that institutions per se were part of the problem and not in any way a solution to the problems facing humankind.
“Instead, Krishnamurti points to an essentially religious way of life which is open to everyone, but which can only be lived without reliance on any authority whatsoever. It is an approach which frees the individual to a direct and anonymous relationship with the source and substance of creation. As a result of his life and teachings, Krishnamurti has expanded the meaning of religion to encompass a way of life which is fundamentally mystical.”[ii] Professor of religious studies, Hillary Peter Rodrigues, is describing Krishnaji’s belief in the importance of self-reliance in the process of Self-transformation.
From a pamphlet he wrote in 1928 we can see he had already begun the process of synthesis that would culminate in his insight into the necessity for self-reliance in the process of awakening. “When I went to Europe for the first time I lived among people who were wealthy and well-educated, who held positions of social authority; but whatever their dignities and distinctions, they could not satisfy me. I was in revolt against Theosophists with all their jargons, their theories, their meetings, and their explanations of life. I questioned everything because I wanted to find out for myself.”[iii]
“I walked about the streets, watching the faces of people who perhaps watched me with even greater interest. I went to theaters, I saw how people amused themselves trying to forget their unhappiness, thinking that they were solving their problems by drugging their hearts and minds with superficial excitement.”[iv]
He turned the focus of his growing awareness to religion in a short pamphlet entitled Life the Goal. “Religion, as I understand it, is the frozen thought of men out of which they have built temples and churches. The moment you attribute to external authority a spiritual and divine law and order, you are limiting, you are suffocating that very life that you wish to fulfill, to which you would give freedom. If there is limitation, there is bondage and suffering. The world at present is the expression of life in bondage. So according to my point of view, beliefs, religions, dogmas, and creeds, have nothing to do with life, and hence have nothing to do with truth.”[v]
After a decade of educating the young avatar and creating the Order of the Star in the East as the worldwide organization which he would lead, his teachers handed the movement over to him in August 1929 at a large “camp meeting.” His first act as leader sent a shock wave through the large crowd in attendance and ultimately throughout the world-wide community that had been awaiting the formal beginning of his campaign to bring enlightenment to a troubled world. He dissolved the organization and stepped down from his position before he had even assumed it and addressed the assembled crowd.
“If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the head of the Order, to dissolve it. No one has persuaded me to this decision.”[vi]
From this point on, beginning in 1929, Krishnaji became a world teacher speaking at informal gatherings expressing his own personal insights. For example, at a gathering in Bangalore in 1948: “The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.”[vii]
In Krishnamurti’s Journal of 1982 he warned of the limitations of the intellect. “The very word science means knowledge, and man hopes through science he will be transformed into a sane and happy human being. And so man is pursuing eagerly knowledge of all the things of the earth and of himself. Knowledge is not compassion and without compassion knowledge breeds mischief and untold misery and chaos. Knowledge cannot make man love; it can create war and instruments of destruction but cannot bring love to the heart or peace to the mind.”[viii]
The illusion of identifying with the false self was articulated forcefully in The First and Last Freedom published in 1954. “Revolution, this psychological creative revolution in which the ‘me’ is not, comes only when the thinker and the thought are one, when there is no duality such as the thinker controlling thought; and I suggest it is this experience alone that releases the creative energy which in turn brings about a fundamental revolution, the breaking up of the psychological me.”[ix]
Our fundamental challenge in creating a sustainable human community and in transcending our personal suffering is distinguishing illusion from reality. For this we need a radically divergent approach to thinking itself. For example, Krishnaji’s definition of negation: “Negation is to deny what is false [while] not knowing what is truth. [It is] to see the false in the false and to see the truth in the false, and it is the truth that denies the false. You see what is false, and the very seeing of what is false is the truth.”[x]
Before any of us can become “synthesizers” we must have something to synthesize and this involves not only our connection to our own inner wisdom but the influences in our environment, including our teachers.
Many of the key insights that make up the content of Simple Reality are revealed in short, simple phrases or formulas (see the article on the Algebra of Simple Reality). In this way the simplicity of the process of liberation, of waking up, is confirmed.
We began this article with one of the most profound and insightful statements in the New Testament, “Whatever state I am in therewith to be content.” (Phil. 4:11)
Seekers of truth, if successful, will arrive at the insight that all human suffering is caused by reacting to or resisting the experience of life itself. Krishnamurti was no exception.
I don’t mind what’s happening.
— J. Krishnamurti
[i] Blau, Evelyn. Krishnamurti: 100 Years. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1995, p. 20.
[ii] Ibid., p. 227.
[iii] Ibid., p. 25.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid., p. 76.
[vi] Ibid., p. 86.
[vii] Ibid., p. 98.
[viii] Ibid., p. 116.
[ix] Ibid., p. 140.
[x] Ibid., p. 219.
